Often Irreverent, Mostly Rational Blog for Fans of the Toronto Blue Jays. One Day, We'll Be Perfect.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

JP Ricciardi didn't walk on water (but maybe Alex Anthopoulos will)

There. Are you happy now? Is that enough for you?

It seems that taking an honest look at the Ricciardi years - and not automatically turning on the hysterics at every misstep - deems one to be a total and complete JP apologist and Wilner hack.

(To be fair, the "hack" part of the equation is quite accurate in the case of present company. I'm not trying to fool anyone here.)

Never mind that I feel like that I've been quite open about negative feelings on some transactions:

Never liked the Frank Thomas signing, though it's hard to argue the production the Big Hurt provided in year 1. It was the 2 years-$20M + vesting option that did not equate.

Was not happy about the Reed Johnson - Shannon Stewart saga. And not because ol' Reeder is a scrappy high socked/dirty shirt ball o' hustle. It was because I though Stewart was done before they signed him; barely less than a warm body in left.

There were more, I'm sure. Doesn't even matter. What is laughable is the "fire JP" crowd's tendency to completely ignore not only the many solid baseball transactions under his watch, but the realities he faced on a daily basis holding down the office of Blue Jays GM.

No playoffs in 8 years? Hard to dispute. Judging on that basis alone, his tenure was a failure. But was it really 8 years of failure? In how many of those years was he really given a clear mandate to build a winner, and not to simply "control costs/be competitive"? Three years? Four years?

Oh, and you're tired of hearing about the difficulties of competing in the AL East? The Jays should be more like the Twins, for example, who get by on limited payroll and sniff the postseason seemingly annually? Hat tip to commenter Peter D for the following:

But it's over. JP's done, and even staunch supporters realize it was time and another year under Ricciardi most certainly would not have been healthy for the franchise. And on that note, as far as debating the pros and cons of life under JP, so am I.

So bring on the Anthopoulos years. I'm on board. What choice do we have?

17 comments:

But what about the Twins' scrappiness? Their heart? Their ability to so consistently play with pride? Their uncanny resemblance to The Bad News Bears? You apologists and your "facts" and "logic" are really starting to cheese my whiz.

Us online people will quit bringing it up as soon as every fucking asshole covering the team stops rolling out the same bullshit arguments that support the conclusion that the Jays would win if they just tried a little bit harder.

It's bullshit pandering to bullshit fans that still want to congratulate Kelly Gruber on getting his shirt dirty all the time. It's not productive to the debate, and everytime it comes up in "legitimate" print media everybody who actually cares about this team and where it is going should call bullshit immediately.

Even if we want to look at the Twins as a model for success (to which I also call bullshit), they still don't win because they have guts. They win because they have a leadoff hitter who gets on base 40% of the time, a catcher with an OPS of over 1000 and 4 guys with 30 HRs. Oh, and they practice hitting the cutoff man like you wouldn't believe.

It seems commentators who choose to defend JP have opinions that are 'fair' or 'balanced'. I think I've heard that slogan before? I think that JP had some successful draft picks and some clear winning trades. On the bad, if you are going to lose, you should at least be managed efficiently. I think it's fair to say back end-loading contracts and tying up one quarter of payroll in one long term contract is not efficient. That was the theme of JP's payroll management, not one isolated example. I think it is clear that the bad choices far outweigh the good. Add in the perception that he did not want to be part of the community of Canadian baseball and the move to AA to make a lot of sense. Here's to hope! Thanks for your blog!

Who the fuck cares if JP "did not want to be part of the community of Canadian baseball"? This is Major League Baseball, all I care about is whether he can build a good Major League Baseball team. I don't care how he was with the media, I don't care where he lived, I don't care if he hosted a free BBQ at Rogers Centre for all the Toronto Little League players and coaches, none of that affected how good the Jays were.

Wait a minute, didn't JP bring in Stairs, Richmond, Koskie, Loewen, and Anthopoulos, and bring back Cito? Wasn't he the only GM in baseball to do a weekly radio show talking directly to the fans? This perception of him disrespecting Canada/Toronto is entirely a creation of the local media. They hate that he snubs them for the hacks that they are and because they constantly bring up bullshit complaints like him not living here. Griffin is still finding ways to take shots at JP even when he's not writing about JP. If you're wondering why Jays bloggers have thin skin regarding this stuff, go read some of the garbage the local media writes and the comments below their articles that their brainwashed readers. The trend of "online people" defending JP's tenure is simply a natural reaction to all the bullshit we've been reading for years from the print guys.

Best of luck to Expo exilist and vowel monopolist Alex Anthopoulos. Nice to read that he's focusing on infrastructure improvement as he doesn't have brinks trucks full of dirty bronx money to buy yerself a starting rotation. Only makes sense really. Though to give up on scouting the pacific rim is a bit of a let down for me - would be nice to unearth Ichiro version 2.0 in the future.

I guess the first serious measure of AA's institutional change will be to see what he does with all those draft picks available to him in 2010. Also, if they will be signed. Sure, other things will happen in the meantime, but if he wants to build for the future then surely how he defines what the future 'means' will be etch-a-sketched out during the draft, at least in brief.